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Also in Triana, I saw flamenco performed by gypsies. When I returned to Spain and to Sevilla in 2006, nothing I had heard before the journey - or heard during it - made me want especially to sample contemporary flamenco. I read recently that to find the real thing nowadays you need to get yourself invited into a Spanish gaol. I can believe it and have no desire to check it out...

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Those times in Sevilla were as good and as formative as my time in Palamós. I learned some Spanish at the University, formerly the tobacco factory that is celebrated in the book and the opera of Carmen. The enduring popularity of Carmen is something which I think I understand but do not share. I would not cross the street for Carmen in any form (with the possible exception of Carmen Jones): the story strikes me as picture postcard in its effect and the opera, stuffed as it with pretty tunes, ends up as precisely that: a stuffing of pretty tunes. Didn't Nietzsche come to admire Carmen? And didn't he for that matter come to be insane?

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For a French musician's sound-world impression of Spain I prefer Debussy, and as for Bizet there are works in the canon I much prefer to Carmen. As for French writing about nineteenth century Spain I remember reading Théophile Gautier with pleasure (the prose, not the poetry - or not all the poetry). That must have been about the time that I read George Borrow's fascinating The Bible in Spain, a hugely recommendable read as I recall, that goes well beyond its seemingly restrictive Bible Society remit. It is so long since I read either Borrow or Gautier, however, that I can't be certain I'd hold the same views now.

I did not spend too much time in Sevilla at the University (although I was there long enough to be given a copy of Juan Ramón Jiménez's Platero y Yo, which still occupies a favoured place on my bookshelves). Mostly I learned Spanish in the streets and in the parks and gardens. I socialised in various places including the far from stuffy expats' club, which was frequented by young Spaniards as well as young people of several other nationalities. Spanish was a kind of lingua franca in a social mix where any one of the other available languages could be used as a fall-back. In this way I quickly accomplished the procedure which a friend, on a visit to Berlin, once referred to as 'making the town smaller': making it sufficiently familiar for a stranger not to be intimidated or, just as importantly, not to lose huge chunks of time by being lost.

The cathedral and the Giralda became everyday landmarks, as did Calle Sierpes. Also, familiar as I was by now with Manuel de Falla's Noches en los Jardines de España, I learned to know and love Sevilla's Judas trees and orange trees and the gardens of its parks... or so I thought...